1. Statement of the Technical Field
The present invention relates to the field of mobile commerce and more particularly to processing payment requests with mobile server wallets in a payment transaction management network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Mobile commerce transactions are those e-commerce transactions which can be initiated through a mobile pervasive device such as a cellular telephone, personal digital assistant or a digital pager. Typical mobile commerce transactions include the purchase of goods or services, travel tickets including airfare and admission to venues such as sporting events, motion pictures or musical concerts. In a conventional e-commerce transaction, payment for the transaction can be cleared through a third-party payment system communicatively coupled to a Web server hosting the transaction. In this regard, the conventional e-commerce transaction can include a simple scheme of content browsing client, content server and payment clearance system.
Mobile commerce transactions differ from e-commerce transactions principally by way of the mobility of the pervasive device. Specifically, in addition to a content server and payment clearance system, a wireless service provider will be required to act as a gateway between a network of pervasive devices and the Internet. Importantly, given the mobility of pervasive devices in mobile commerce, mobile server wallets have been deployed to facilitate the exchange of payment information from the pervasive device of the shopper and the merchant payment clearance system. Mobile Server Wallets can store shipping information, billing information, payment methods, payment information and the like for the convenience both of the shopper and the merchant. Individual Mobile Server Wallets can be accessed by the merchant at checkout to facilitate the transaction without requiring the manual intervention of the shopper.
To provide to the shopper the convenience of a Mobile Server Wallet, a relationship must be established between the Wireless Service Provider and the Mobile Server Wallet Provider. Yet, by its very nature individual ones of pervasive devices may enjoy relationships with Mobile Server Wallet Providers which remain unknown to the Wireless Service Provider. In this regard, the Mobile Server Wallet Provider can be disposed within the Wireless Service Provider, within a separate Internet Service Provider, within the content servers of financial institutions, within the transaction processing facilities of individual merchants, or within a content portal. Nevertheless, regardless of the identity of the Mobile Server Wallet Provider, the Wireless Service Provider must know this identity to properly route payment messages.
FIG. 1 is a schematic illustration of a well-known mobile transaction architecture in which payment messages can be routed through a Mobile Server Wallet Provider disposed within a wireless network. The architecture of the known art can include a wireless services gateway 140 coupled to a mobile service wallet provider (MSWP) 120 within a wireless service provider network. In operation, a user mobile device 110 can communicate with an on-line store 150 through both wireless and wire-bound portions of the global Internet. When consummating a transaction, the MSWP 120 can intercept the “checkout page” and can process the checkout page in association with the mobile server wallet (not shown) provided by the user mobile device 110. Specifically, the MSWP 120 can route the payment transaction to a suitable payment issuer 160 disposed among a multitude of payment issuers 130. The payment issuer 160 can process the transaction to produce a commitment of payment. Subsequently, the payment issuer 160 can route the commitment to the on-line store 150 through the MSWP 120.
As it will be apparent to the skilled artisan, the conventional manner in which MSWP technology has been integrated into the mobile commerce paradigm remains deficient in several important respects. First, substantial infrastructure will be required to support the MSWP 120 within the wireless network. Minimally, the MSWP 120 must include a full-fledged operating system, a database management system and an application server. Yet, the foregoing architecture hardly represents a minimally invasive configuration. Additionally, the architecture of FIG. 1 cannot scale to support the dynamic selection of different mobile server wallets through multiple MSWPs.